The portal to Floor 11 dissolved into a fine red mist, depositing the primary assault group into the heart of a dead kingdom.
The city of Drak’thar sprawled before them in silent, gilded ruin. Collapsed obsidian architecture lined broad avenues buried under centuries of pale volcanic ash. Immense statues of ancient dragons stood vigil at shattered intersections—their carved eyes blind, their stone wings spread in eternal, frozen flight. Above them, the churning red sky felt suffocatingly close, acting as a lid on a pressure cooker. The Tower’s heartbeat was no longer a distant thrum; it was a deafening, physical tremor that shook the ash from the rooftops and rattled the teeth in Nathan’s skull.
The four parties fanned out, moving with hyper-vigilant precision. Silver Drake’s vanguard took point, their heavy shields forming a slow-moving wall. Red Dragon and Goldcrest secured the flanks, their summons venting nervous steam into the dry air. In the center, Nathan’s [Hunter’s Insight] swept the ruins, searching for the ambush.
He found nothing.
No Lizardmen. No Drakes. No Wyverns circling in the red sky. There was only the ash, the ruins, and the crushing weight of time.
"Keep your guard up," Nathan murmured, his voice sounding entirely too loud in the stillness. "A silent Tower is a trap waiting to spring."
"Could be a Neutral safe floor," Torren suggested, gripping his axe tighter. "Even Elite monoliths give you a chance to breathe."
"This isn’t a reprieve," Seraphine countered quietly. Her griffin was pacing beside her, the feathers on its neck standing straight up. "This is anticipation. Something is watching us."
At Nathan’s side, Mirko was in her humanoid form, her sword drawn. But her usual bravado was entirely absent. Her long ears twitched erratically, and her pink eyes darted across the ruined architecture with a deeply unsettled expression.
Master, she whispered through their bond, her mental voice fragile. This place... it feels like a word I have forgotten how to speak. It is familiar, but the memory is locked away. It makes my skin crawl.
I feel the resonance as well, Kuro added. She was in her humanoid form, her dark eyes scanning the broken statues with a startling intensity. The Tower is ancient, but there is something else buried in these ruins. Something intricately tied to us. To what... we were.
Before the System? Nathan asked.
Yes. Before the summoning. Before we were bound to a UI. Kuro paused, her gaze lingering on a shattered obsidian spire. This city... we... were here once. I cannot tell you how I know. But... I know.
Nathan filed the revelation away. The blinding headaches. The localized static in the Whispering Dark. The voice that had bled through a corrupted portal that only he and his bunny girls heard. And now, a dead draconic city that actively resonated with his summons’ erased past. The threads were beginning to weave together.
"Stay close," Nathan said softly. "If this environment triggers a reaction—"
We will not break down, Kuro stated with absolute certainty. Whatever ghosts live here, we will face them. We are not the same fragile summons that shattered in the Whispering Dark.
"Hmph! Indeed!" Mirko’s ears snapped to attention, desperately attempting to rally her usual bravado. "This Knight does not flee from ghosts! I face them head-on! With aggressive physical trauma!"
That is your solution to literally everything, Kuro noted.
"Because it has an impeccable success rate!"
Despite the mounting tension, Nathan felt a faint smile touch his lips. Whatever was buried in this ash, they would unearth it together.
The temple sat at the dead center of the city like a jagged wound.
It was a staggering cathedral built of black glass and gold, its massive pillars carved into the likeness of roaring dragons. The roof had caved in centuries ago, allowing the violent red sky to bleed directly into the sanctuary. Ash drifted down in a lazy, unending snow globe effect, coating the ancient stone.
At the far end of the temple, illuminated by the crimson skylight, was the mural.
It covered the entire back wall, stretching fifty feet high. The pigments still glowed with a faint, defiant luminescence despite centuries of neglect. It was a masterpiece of war. It depicted a cataclysmic battle that fractured the sky—dragons of impossible scale breathing fire, frost, and lightning down upon a chaotic battlefield. Below them, armies clashed in a tide of blood and steel.
But it was the center of the mural that stopped Mirko and Kuro dead in their tracks.
Fighting back-to-back with the greatest of the ancient dragons were tall, graceful warriors. They moved with lethal fluidity, wielding swords of blinding light, staffs of absolute magic and daggers forged from living shadow. They wore gleaming armor, their shields locked against a tide of encroaching, formless dark. And rising from their heads were long, furred ears.
Demi-Beasts. The slaughtered race. The souls that had been chained and reformatted into the Bunny Girl Summoning System.
Mirko and Kuro stood paralyzed before the wall. The rest of the vanguard pushed forward, sweeping the temple for threats, but Nathan stayed anchored beside his summons. Derek, noticing the sudden halt, signaled his party to secure the perimeter and walked over. He looked at the mural, then at the pale faces of the two summons. He didn’t ask questions. He simply stood watch.
That... that is us, Mirko whispered through the link. Her voice broke, stripped of all its armor. Those are our people. We... fought in this war. We... stood beside the dragons. We... weren’t always just a burst of mana... we were alive, master. We were real.
The war... against the darkness, Kuro said. The usual cool detachment in her voice was gone, replaced by a profound, suffocating grief. The Babel Towers didn’t just absorb Drak’thar. They ended the war. We fought on this ground. And we died here.
Kuro raised a trembling hand, pointing to a specific section near the altar. A Demi-Beast assassin draped in dark armor, twin blades drawn, standing in the shadow of a colossal golden dragon. The warrior’s face was obscured, but the distinct, white hair markings were identical to the ones Kuro wore now.
That... was me, Kuro breathed. Before the System erased me. I was a soldier. I—
She violently gasped, her hands flying to her temples. A microsecond later, Mirko cried out, her knees buckling as she clutched her head. Nathan lunged, catching Mirko before she hit the stone, while Derek instinctively stepped in to steady Kuro by the shoulder.
"Mirko! Kuro! Stay with me!"
Agony! it feels like the Whispering Dark! Mirko’s thoughts were frantic, tearing through the mental link in jagged spikes. The... Shepherd! The Shepherd did this! He gutted our minds and paved over the ruins! But we were here! We died here!
The psychic spike vanished as abruptly as it had struck.
Mirko sagged heavily against Nathan’s chest, gasping for air. Kuro straightened up, shrugging off Derek’s steadying hand. Her dark eyes were haunted, but the grief had instantly calcified into a cold, terrifying fury. Derek stepped back, his expression carefully neutral, but Nathan caught the look in his eyes. It was the quiet understanding of a man who intimately knew what it felt like to lose parts of himself he could never retrieve.
"We will get the answers," Nathan promised, his grip tightening protectively on Mirko’s shoulder. "Whatever this Shepherd did to your people, we will drag it into the light. But right now, we have to survive this floor. Vorlagrath is directly below us. He might know exactly what happened here."